Indian CEO could well get Elon Musk-like pay packet

QuantumScape Corp. Chief Executive Officer Jagdeep Singh may just get a multibillion-dollar pay package, provided shareholders put their final stamp of approval on the proposal.

If the start-up meets required conditions, Jagdeep Singh could receive stock options valued at as much as $2.3 billion, said proxy advisory firm Glass Lewis.

At the annual shareholder meeting recently, the voters gave a primary approval, but a final tally of votes isn’t available yet.

Not all are in support of the staggering package though. Glass Lewis had reportedly asked stockholders to reject the package. Institutional Shareholder Services, another advisory firm, also is against it.

The success of Tesla Inc. has brought in lot of cash in the electric vehicle market. Even otherwise, start-ups are offering astronomical pay packages to their top executives.

“Such pacts echo the compensation agreement that helped make Tesla CEO Elon Musk the world’s richest person,” said Dayna Harris, a partner at executive compensation firm Farient Advisors, told Bloomberg.

Also read: Tesla to accept dogecoin as payment for merch, Elon Musk says

Justifying the huge package to Jagdeep Singh, QuantumScape issued a letter addressing stakeholders. “We strongly believe in setting challenging, hard-to-achieve goals, and then focusing efforts to make them happen,” the letter read. “This is why we based this new award on stretch goals and why we gave our key executives the ability to share in the upside in a way that is commensurate with the difficulty of achieving them,” it read further.

QuantumScape is an American company that does research about solid state lithium metal batteries for electric cars. The company is headquartered in San Jose, California and employs around 400 people. Investors include Bill Gates and Volkswagen.